Best Built Dating Apps

We downloaded four apps shortly after the new years eve of 2016 in order to get out of our comfort zone and to see what their UI/UX was like. This is my experience:

The four apps are Tinder; Bumble; Happn; and Coffee Meets Bagel.

From UI/UX standpoint:

UI ~

At the heart of all dating apps, UI’s should be their ability to provide a good messaging platform. Tinder is far and above all the rest in this form and its engineering is solid. The transitions from one page to the next never fumbled around and the speed that images load are impressive. Some of the things that Tinder has going for it is its messaging service it allows you to see if you sent that person a message last or they are waiting for your reply by placing an arrow in your text indicating that you were the last one to respond. This comes in handy when you have multiple people to respond to and you don’t want to open every message to see if you were the last one to respond in the conversation thread.  In addition to this Tinder has just implemented gifs and the ability to like a message that someone has sent to you. Tinder also allows you to immediately message people that you have connected with.

Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB) comes in at a distant second with its messaging platform. The app does provide the basic necessities of a messaging platform however, it is lacking the strong engineering from seasoned coders. Once you are connected to another person you are prompted to ask them some sort of ice breaker question that only you can see, this is a nice perk, although most of the time it is out of context to the other person and comes off as weird. This is because the question is computer generated by something the other person added to their profile or in some cases hasn’t added to their profile and maybe it was just an error in the coding and linked to their profile. I’ve asked several people the ice breaker question and it has never gone well, either they have no idea what I’m talking about or they find it weird that I know something that is not visible in their profile. As an example an ice breaker question might state “Ask your match about how they learned to speak five languages?” This question was posed and answered with “I only speak two why would you think I speak 5?”  In addition, the UI is a bit sloppy in transitioning from one page to the next and leaves that keyboard inoperable on occasions. Moreover, if you started to type and you leave the page to in order to check something outside of the messaging tab, when you come back your text will be deleted. Just to be clear this is unsent text in the keyboard. This issue is still annoying as lots of times I’ll find myself starting a response and then wanting to comment on something in the profile or checking the spelling but having to remember that I have to copy everything that I just wrote if I don’t want it to disappear. However, on the plus side, the app does bold new messages and uses something similar to app icon for notifications when you have a new message. This being said the boldness goes away once you’ve open the message and it looks like every other message if you don’t reply at that time, there will be nothing distinguishing outgoing messages from incoming messages.

Happn comes in at third. Messaging on this app was built at the basic level also. It is a standard run of the mill uninspired cookie cutter messing board. There is simply nothing impressive about it. The messaging does have bolding for new messaging. Of course this is not what Happn was built for but they put no effort or imagination into adding functions.

Bumble is the absolute worst of this entire list and has almost no redeeming qualities. Once you are connected to the person your messages show up in some orange-like color, that’s it, that all that differentiates them from any other messaging platform.  The engineering is sloppy and unimaginative. If someone message you it almost never refreshes to show that you have a new message. The conversation does move to the top of the stack but it still reads what you sent last, it’s not until you open the message that a new message downloads. Transitioning from one page to the next feels clunky and not fully thought-out. There are disappearing messaging, and there is no symbol denoting if you were the last one to send a message. It awful just down right awful.

UX~

If the messaging platform is the heart then the UX is the brains of the operation and the smartest app is Coffee Meets Bagel. This app not only matches you with someone but it facilitates the first few weeks of your relationship. The app has a very well written program that continues to make suggestions for the first few weeks while you and the person that you were matched with get acquainted. Suggestions include asking them about a certain fact, asking if the both of you would like to continue the conversation or meet up in real life, and then asking if you actually did meet up in real life. Since the conversation could possibly close within 7 days this also gives you extra incentive to put more effort into making your connection happen. After the 7 days the app will ask you if you would like to continue given you three option; Yes, No, or Maybe. The app is pretty intelligent in this aspect of this functionality if both parties answer yes it will automatically invite you to meet up by displaying a message reading when are you free next week to meet up? If one party answers maybe and the other party answers yes the chat will reopen to give both a chance to get more comfortable with each other, the same from two maybe answers. If one party answers “no” the chat is permanently closed. Any double positive answer leads to the chat conversation being open for another week after that week the next automatic message is one that reads “Have you meet up?” This is a “yes”, a “not yet”, or a “not planning to” answer with responses to the question are general encouragement by the app. 

Tinder takes second place because it just has strong engineering behind it. Everything runs absolutely smoothly. There is a search bar for conversations and names that might get lost in the mix, the profile bar that keeps all the new matches is in a great place. There are no real advantages except for the fact that things are just well written you can tell the company either has a ton of money to hire the best engineers or have been doing it so long they have really learned from other mistakes and are implementing constant improvements. Just recently the company added the ability to send GIFs. On the other hand I have been traveling a lot recently and my GPS settings seem constantly incorrect and I have been getting matched with people 7000 miles from my current location.

Happn has no real extra points when it comes to the apps experience. It’s just doesn’t stand out as something that is awesome or heavily thought through, one the other hand it does deliver exactly what it’s supposed to an app that connects you with people you might have ran across in real life.

With Bumble the stress of the initial contact is off of gentlemen and put on to the ladies. One of the differences between Bumble and Tinder is that ladies have to message the men first. This takes the pressure off of ladies who would otherwise not like to engage with someone after given it some thought. This also takes the pressure off of guys to always take initiative and come up with something to say on the introduction. This gender reversal has some downfalls, for one ladies still want to be chased after they have initiated the conversation, with a one-word message “Hi” or an emoji. After that, it all falls back on the male to carry the conversation.   Mostly Bumble feels like a lesser knock-off of Tinder with one slight difference.  

In summation as for as ranking goes, I would say that CMB edged out Tinder as the number one spot for a well-built app just because it has more thought and takes a slightly different approach by curating matching and then facilitating the first few weeks. After that would be Happn, and then Bumble.

1. CMB
2. Tinder
3. Happn
4. Bumble

Update: I wrote this in 2016 and have since deleted the apps and profiles and have not gone back to them. I am sure however that they have since upgraded the features and offering.